The invention relates to a heating system and method for a greenhouse.
There is a growing movement in the United States for fresh foods grown in a sustainable way. In particular, urban and suburban residents are becoming more aware of where their food is being grown and how it is being grown. Furthermore, many of these residents are concerned with the high amount of carbon emissions resulting from growing and transporting the food and the effect the emissions have on the environment. This movement, called here the local food movement, has created significant demand for fresh, local, sustainable foods.
Farmers' markets, where farmers truck in their produce from distant farm fields, are now common in many cities and profitable for the farmers despite the cost of hauling their food from distant locations. Similarly, many urban restaurants pay significant sums to have fresh produce hauled daily to their restaurant. But there are significant environmental costs to this, as the transportation process is expensive in both dollars and pollution, especially carbon emissions.
Furthermore, the lack of direct access to fresh produce is more than just a commercial concern. Reliable access to fresh produce is important should a natural or man-made disaster strike a city. Indeed, urban officials view food security as an important modern-day issue. For example, in cold weather climates like Chicago, blizzards can make roads impassable for days, causing food shortages. A nearby, home-grown source of produce is important to keeping people fed. Relatedly, in the inner city entire neighborhoods are regularly without fresh produce, even without such disasters. Urban officials refer to these areas as “urban deserts.” The lack of good nutrition from fresh produce causes a whole host of human developmental issues.
The high urban (and many suburban) land costs, however, prevent the food from being grown closer to the urban and many suburban consumers. It is usually more profitable to build a skyscraper on a city lot than to grow tomatoes on that lot.
Another problem with the current agricultural system is that in cold weather climates, such as Chicago, produce cannot be locally grown year round. Farmers' markets operate only during good weather, when crops can be sewn and harvested. And urban restaurants accordingly must have the produce flown in or trucked in from warm weather climates, which is expensive in dollar and environmental costs.
For cold weather climates, one solution is to use a greenhouse to grow produce year round. But that is an expensive proposition. Heating a greenhouse is one of the largest operating costs for such a business and usually results in an unprofitable venture or at least very expensive produce. Additionally, such heating is not environmentally friendly, as it generally consumes fossil fuels and adds to carbon emissions, among other problems.
Accordingly, it would be of great value to grow produce economically and locally in a cold weather urban or suburban environment on a year-round basis. The invention accomplishes this.